


I'll Tell You My Sins And You Can Sharpen Your Knife

by porcupinepeopleskills



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, torture mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-18
Updated: 2014-11-18
Packaged: 2018-02-26 03:26:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2636279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/porcupinepeopleskills/pseuds/porcupinepeopleskills
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jemma is sent to interrogate the new prisoner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Tell You My Sins And You Can Sharpen Your Knife

Coulson sends Jemma down to Vault D to interrogate their new prisoner. “He knows you,” he’d told her. “It might make him more willing to cooperate. If not, there’s always the threat of torture.”

Jemma swallows the protests on the tip of her tongue. _I only recently became an effective liar, how could I be any good at interrogation?_ _I betrayed his trust._ _I’m the last person he’d want to speak to._ Coulson’s earlier agitation is gone; replaced by a steely, single-minded focus that Jemma knows better than to cross.

Jemma quietly opens the door to Vault D and has tiptoed halfway down the stairs before she realizes how silly she’s being. Bakshi is trapped behind an opaque barrier that blocks out all sound. There is no way he can know she’s coming. Yet when she taps the button to deactivate the opacity of the barrier, Bakshi is standing in the centre of his cell, staring at her expectantly.

Jemma grips the edges of the tablet and takes a second to compose herself under the guise of studying the new captive.

His prison garb is a spare set belonging to Ward, and the material hangs loosely from Bakshi’s slighter frame. Without his sharp suit and impeccable hair he seems far removed from the man who could have anyone cowering in terror with a single glance. He looks small and vulnerable, and Jemma knows that out of this entire situation, Bakshi would hate the loss of his everyday armour most of all.

"Miss Simmons," he says. He smiles. Spreads his hands. "How lovely to see you again."

Jemma stands a safe distance from the cell barrier and calmly meets Bakshi’s penetrating stare. “I need you to give me the location of Dr. Daniel Whitehall.”

He ignores her entirely. “What a shame we’re reconnecting under these circumstances.”

“Mr. Bakshi,” Jemma says sharply. “I didn’t come here to catch up.”

He tilts his head, throwing the angles of his face into sharp relief. “No,” he says. “I don’t imagine you did.” He bares his teeth in an unsettling approximation of a smile. “You were sent here to interrogate me like the good little SHIELD soldier you are.”

He’s testing her; hunting for a crack in her cool exterior. Jemma doesn’t bite. When she speaks, her voice is flat and steady. “This is how it’s going to work. If you refuse to cooperate, you will be tortured until we get the information we require.”

Bakshi goes very still. Jemma gives him the same threatening smile she’d always seen him use on Hydra underlings who were wasting his time, and turns to go.

“It was foolish of me to trust you,” he says when she’s almost reached the stairs. She stops and looks back. He’s right up against the barrier of his cell, looking at her with an expression she cannot decipher. “I admit I was… charmed by you.”

Jemma remembers the cold, ruthless efficiency he would display while directing Hydra’s day-to-day operations. Remembers the way he’d always seem to soften around her. How he’d smile indulgently at her when she’d present to him her latest discoveries. She takes a breath.

“I was nauseated by you,” she says, and then leaves the vault.

**Author's Note:**

> Where did this pairing come from, you ask? WHO KNOWS. NOT ME.


End file.
